A heart-felt letter to my President

A heart-felt letter to my President

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Yesterday, Seamus Heaney died at the age of 74. He was a poet. He was also the 1995 Noble Prize laureate in literature. In other words, he was a somebody.

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Yesterday, the drums of war were beaten. Lies and deception poured from the mouths of so called world leaders and statesmen. But the peoples of the world knew better. They knew the facts being presented were askew, the calculus was bogus, and the journalists – they are as outrageous as money changers in the temple.

Mr. President: The people long for history and hope to rhyme.

The Cure at Troy

by Seamus Heaney

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker’s father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.